Black
by spoons are for marmalade skies
Summary: James is a Quidditch star. Lily plays the angel of mercy to shed the guilt of marrying her lover's best friend. But she can't break off either relationship, now that someone's child is on the way... AU
1. Seven Years

A/N I've edited this quite a bit since writing it, so it's more or less the same but hopefully makes a little more sense and runs a little smoother.

Enjoy!

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Seven years down the line they're still treading in circles.

First of all they have never been guided by emotion so much as convenience. He is very rich. She is very beautiful, and makes him seem kinder by association; she looks fabulous on his arm: he appreciates her in much the same way that she tolerates him. He has never been certain why she agreed to marry him.

On a rainy Wednesday she can be found dressing to go down to the local shelter, where she will arrange a donation. She is choosing each article of clothing with her usual care, while her husband changes in the next room.

"I made a reservation for seven o'clock," he calls. "You can make it, can't you?"

"Mm…" She winds a scarf around her neck, considering. "I suppose… I'll be in a conference till six thirty."

"Where?" He comes up behind her.

"Down the block from Chianti's, isn't that where you'll be?"

He smiles. "You know me well. Shall I pick you up?"

"Oh, I'll walk. The fresh air will spur my appetite." She tries to smile back, her lips a little tight. He doesn't notice.

"If it runs late give me a call, I can always get them to set it back half an hour."

"Thank you." She slips into a coat and kisses his cheek. "I'll see you this evening."

It's seven o'clock. Twelve hours from now they will be sitting across from each other, swilling their ice around their glasses, trying to find something to say. Not finding anything.


	2. Lovers

She feels a familiar pair of arms wrap around her waist, and smiles into her pillow. Sirius buries his face in her red hair, breathing her in.

"Mmph," she says. "Ger'off me."

"I don't think so, little lady. Get back here."

She crawls out, shaking him off as she goes. He flops against the bedpost, grinning after her. "Lils," he calls.

"What."

"Lils, c'mere."

She leans around the bathroom door, toothbrush sticking out of her mouth. "What."

He holds out his hand, but she shakes her head. "I have to go home and make a nice breakfast for my husband."

He sighs.

"You're getting clingy, love," she says.

"This isn't clingy," he says, his voice muffled with his face pressed to the mattress. "This is guilt."

"Sirius."

"What."

"I love you."

He lays his head on his arm and sighs again. "Just tell James about us, will you?"

She is shocked. He's never suggested anything like this before. "Why?"

"He's my soulmate," Sirius says. "I love him."

"You love me, too," she reminds him.

"I know, I know. I've just been thinking… I can't let him throw away his life on -" He lets the sentence hang. She knows what he was starting to say.

"If I've cheapened myself with this, so have you," she snaps. He tries to follow her into the bathroom, but she's leaning against the door to pull her shoes on. He rests his forehead against it.

"I know. I've just been thinking this isn't going to work."

"Why the hell not?"

"Because of James. We can't remove him from this and you know it."

She pulls the door open, so that he stumbles a little. "He doesn't love me."

"Of course he does. He married you, didn't he?"

She is shaking her head. "No, you don't understand. He's never loved me. It wasn't about that."

"Then what was it?"

"It… I can't explain it. It's complicated, all right?"

"You mean you don't love him."

"We don't love each other."

"Lily," he says, his face at the hollow of her neck. "He talks."

"What do you mean, he talks?"

"He says things to his friends."

"And what does he say?" She's trying not to shiver, Sirius with his body against hers, James at home maybe loving her after all. She tries to pull away.

"He says he loves you, Lily. What do you think?" He lets go of her, and she steps back unwillingly.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I needed you."

She looks at him, eyes dilated in the dim light. There is a ring of green around each pupil.

"I wanted you, then."

"That's what I thought." She's trying not to cry now, feeling dirty where he touched her. She cradles her arm, caressing the skin in an unconsious effort to scrub it clean. "You don't deserve him."

"Neither do you."

"Yes, by all means let's be childish about this." She presses her fingers to her face, palms against her mouth. "You used me. You used us."

"Oh, so it's us now."

She glares.

"I thought you didn't love him."

"Of course I do," she says, "I was misguided."

He lets out a harsh laugh. "You mean you liked fucking me more than your own moral standards."

"It's not like you minded," she mutters, unable to meet his eyes and so looking to the floor for comfort. The neatly tiled walls, the detailing paid for by her husband. She pushes past him. "I have to go."

He doesn't stop her. He must realize that there isn't anything more to say. She shuts the door behind her, gently by habit. She still feels the burn from touching him back.


	3. Pregnant

Lily comes in from her early morning jog looking exhausted. James tries to contain himself but instead sweeps her up and swings her around. She is laughing and asking him what's going on. He has a letter in his hand.

"It's our baby," he says. She stops laughing.

"What – what?"

"Look," he says, showing her the parchment. Her check-up results from St Mungo's, where she had gone last week. She's been feeling off for a while now. She presses a hand to her forehead, then her belly.

"I'm pregnant?"

"Yes," he whispers, holding her close. "The three of us now."

Lily feels sick. There were never two of them – no way to tell him that now. She can only hope he never finds out.

He kisses her and tells her he loves her. She doesn't know what to think. She doesn't know what to think. But at last she feels what he long left unsaid. A love as strong as his conveyed in more than words.


	4. Beginnings

A/N This chap is actually quite different, post editing, although the story is still the same…

--

Lily met Sirius Black at a dinner party, held by their co-worker Remus. They have both changed jobs since then, but at the time they were at opposite ends of the Ministry. Lily recognized him and sauntered up. This is what attracted him to her, he tells her now, that she approached him. Usually it was the other way around.

"Hey," she said, sticking out a hand. "Lily Evans."

"Sirius Black." He started to massage her knuckles but she withdrew, looking around the room. He waited, watching, as she leaned toward him with a small smile.

"You look familiar, Sirius Black," she said, softly so that he had to tilt his head toward hers. She brushed a strand of hair from her face. "Did I meet you by the copy room the other day?"

She laughed suddenly, dropping the whisper. "I've got to go. Say goodbye to Remus for me." She touched his arm and walked away.

He had said two words to her, but she is sure she was in love. Even now when all the masks have been packed away, she convinces herself of this. Not sure if it's to make herself hate him or not, his charm behind that slow grin.

She let him take her home eventually – not as soon as either would have liked. Progress, she called it. Games, he laughed back, when she felt she could tell him the whole thing. They were making everything into a funny story at the time.

This all changed when she dropped by one afternoon to find James, not Sirius, at the flat. Sirius was gone for the weekend, James said, inviting her in.

They talked. It had none of the fire, but a wonderful sense of co-dependency that didn't come with Sirius. Lily's mother told her to love James because of this. After her mother's death, Lily, to remove that damnable survivor's guilt, decided to marry him.

He and Sirius were on the national Quidditch team then. Sirius hadn't known about James in much the same way that James never knew about Lily's continuing relationship with Sirius; the lies being too easy for her to stop them now. Sirius left the team when he heard. It was a little harder to leave Lily, but impossible to tell James; they were all in too far to back out. Over their heads until even Lily, loved by two such men, could no longer enjoy the deceit. The love almost gone.

So it is with a certain sense of relief that Lily leaves Sirius at last. She even considers telling James, thinking that to trust Sirius in anything, particularly matters of the heart, might be foolish. James won't care; surely he doesn't love her. But then he runs to her saying Our baby, Look. Joy. Anticipation.

She's exhausted.


	5. End

"Jesus Christ," James is saying when Lily comes in the next afternoon. She comes up behind him quietly and, seeing Sirius, backs out of the room. James continues and she stops to listen.

"What the fuck do you mean, it could be yours?"

"James," Sirius starts miserably, head hanging. His inability to meet James' eyes keeps Lily undetected for the moment, because they are both looking away. She has covered her mouth to keep James from hearing her sudden deep breaths. Sirius has told James. She starts to feel dizzy and nauseous. She is rooted to the spot or she might have run to the bathroom, a mixture of terror and what she supposes is a first bout of morning sickness.

She was going to tell James, until this thing came up. Then she thought they could overlook it, forget it, make a happy family. They could learn to love each other, get to know each other.

Now this.

"For Christ's sake," James says, dropping into the couch across from Sirius. His legs are stretched out casually but his tense figure tells Lily that he's about to break. She waits for the explosion. "How long?"

Sirius swallows. "Before she met you. I didn't know about you either until…" He trails off, trying to find words that don't shift the blame from himself. "I should have stopped it, James. She chose you."

"Apparently not," James says bitterly. "Jesus."

"It's over," Sirius says. "Before we knew about all this, we wanted to end it for your sake."

"You're late," James snaps. "What did she do, come crying to you while I was out working my ass off for her? You thought she was lonely?"

"Well, she was. You barely know each other. It isn't your fault," Sirius adds quickly. "It's just how it is."

"I should have worked less," James mutters. "No, never mind, she was with you the whole time."

"I think –"

"Don't tell me what you think, like you know my wife better than I do. Harping out solutions, will you just shut up? If I wanted to hire someone to sleep with my wife I would have done it." James is suddenly furious. "God knows I've given her everything else she's ever wanted. Fuck, what the hell am I going to do?" He covers his face with his hands. "I might have seen it coming from her, but come on, Sirius."

Sirius is as close to crying as he'll ever get: his voice is steady but his hands are shaking. "We tried to end it after she married you. I mean, I did end it. But she's just – no, I don't want to say that. It wasn't all her. And it was… It's harsh to think but James, it was hard on all of us. It's been hard on us too."

James glares. Sirius and Lily were not an 'us' that he had ever worried about. All those weekends he went away and left them with the house, the chummy afternoons spent together, those were the days of smart people with a mutual friend. Not lovers. Not traitors.

He's known Sirius for too long for the charm to work on him, that Sirius has unconsciously turned on in the vain hope that James will forgive him. "Get the fuck out, all right? If it weren't for that child, I swear to God…" James runs his hand through his hair, yanking it straight up. He hasn't done this in years but even so Lily feels a twinge of annoyance at his nervous habits, and endless energy. She wants to lie down, knowing she should stay to talk to him.

Oh, hell, she thinks. To hell with both of them. She crawls into her bed down the hall, listening to the sounds of James telling Sirius not to bother coming back, and handing him his cloak, and the door slamming. Then James changing the locking spells.

Lily knows that what she did was wrong. She thinks of the way she had twisted her mother's wishes and of the damage she had caused to Sirius and James. She loves Sirius and can't quite bring herself to regret it all: a little piece of her blaming James for not being good enough.

So she doesn't cry. She blinks into her pillowcase, focusing on the way her eyelashes scrape against it, and when she can't help it anymore she invents ways that she could be with Sirius, that Sirius and James could still be friends.

When James comes in she is sleeping. He looks at her, loathing her, his body still loving her as his mind rejects her. He sits beside her and strokes her hair and looks out the window, down the street. He is crying.


	6. Happy Family

James comes home from work and scoops his son into his arms. "Hiya, Harry," he says, doing patticake for him. "Where's Mom?"

Lily comes out of the kitchen, covered in flour and snarling. "Where did I put that cake pan?"

"Wonderful wife! What's the occasion?"

She sends him a look. He grins and winks.

"Let me guess. Is it Daddy's birthday?"

Harry, sucking his thumb, shakes his head.

"Is it Mommy's birthday?"

Another shake.

"Is it Bazoo's birthday?"

Harry looks at his fish, thinks a moment, then shakes his head.

"Well I can't think of anyone else. Maybe Mommy thought it would be a nice surprise."

"It's Harry's birthday!" she says, wrestling him away from his father. "And we went to the park today and Harry walked all on his own!"

"What else did you do?" James crouches in front of his son, as Lily is now trying to demonstrate walking with a very wobbly Harry. "Frisbee? Tag?"

"We bought ice cream, didn't we, love?" Lily says to him. "And we chased the funny ducks…"

James had never told Lily that he knew, and Lily never brought it up. Once, cautiously, she asked after Sirius. She hadn't seen him since he had left that day; she tried to contact him a few times but he was gone. It crossed her mind that he might have left London.

On Harry's first birthday she opens the door and he is there. He looks grim and she, turning around, sees that James is also severe in his own way. He invites Sirius in, and now he is showing off his son and pretending it's like old times. Meanwhile his face is struggling to remain unreadable, flashing between love and pain and hatred.

Lily spends the time quietly. James thinks it is guilt but mostly she's annoyed. James sprang this on her when she wants more than ever for Harry to be happy. Her whole life is now centred on this hope: to forget and rebuild.

James has torn that down. He seemed to have been working with her, these past two years. There he stands, holding his son, facing his best friend, his face a happy mask, and she tries to understand. He has always worshipped her, she doesn't know why. He is pretending to have forgiven Sirius. And he is ruining Harry's birthday.

She watches him and waits for the explosion.


	7. This Cold Tenth Month

It is late in October. Sirius has been coming every day for the past weeks, and has barely looked at Lily. James watches them silently but doesn't make a move.

Harry adores Sirius. There have been more than a few awkward times, when Harry has chosen Sirius over his father, and none of them are quite sure what to do. But Harry smoothes it over with his smiles.

Right now he is with Remus. They'll be back in half an hour or so; Lily wonders whether Remus might have known the situation when he offered to baby-sit. She looks between James and Sirius, sipping her tea, and knows that it's coming.

Even so it comes with a jolt. "So when were you going to tell me you were fucking him, Lils?" James asks. She was looking at her tea and continues to do so, feeling a flush rising in her cheeks. She sets her cup aside.

Sirius is staring at her, not daring to look at James; then realizes what he is doing and switches his gaze to the floor. She forces herself to relax. "The morning we found out I was pregnant."

"I see. And was this a mutual decision? Or I guess Sirius just went ahead with it."

She doesn't have anything to say to that.

"I take it you aren't surprised that I know."

"You've been a little tense ever since," she says dryly, then winces at her wording, hoping he won't catch on.

"Ever since what?"

Damn him.

"Ever since you overheard Sirius telling me?"

Damn him to hell.

"James," Sirius says, "you're rightly angry, but you called me back here so we could talk, not incriminate."

He sounds so reasonable Lily could just scream. She knows what James' reaction will be.

"You're in my house, Black, shut the fuck up."

That wasn't so bad as she expected. Though she's starting to feel a little scared under James' collected stare. This is too thought-out for him. He's too calm. She risks a glance at Sirius and meets his appealing gaze. He wants her to help him set things right.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, looking at James and feeling the lie.

"No, you aren't."

"I am," she says, "truly I am. I didn't mean for it to go as far as it did. It was just – I can't explain it." She remembers telling Sirius the same thing about James and stops herself, her breaths coming out shallow as she panics. "You love him too, James, can't you understand how it is?"

Sirius sinks slowly back into his chair. He's watching James now, he doesn't want to look at Lily. He sees James' fingers tighten on the arms of his chair, his jaw clenching, and knows that Lily won't notice and will plough on through.

"You never loved me," James says. She makes a small noise to deny it but it comes out all wrong.

Sirius starts to stand. "Do you want me to –"

"Did you love her?" James asks. Sirius sits back down.

"I don't know."

"She loved you?"

"Yes."

"And what about me?"

"I love you more than anything, James, you know that," Sirius says quietly.

"I'm having a little trouble understanding why you fucked my wife, then."

"It wasn't –"

"It was," he says. "You fucked me over when you stayed with her. You knew what it would do to me and you screwed her anyway."

Lily is still trying to deny it. "James, it wasn't like that, he didn't –"

"He did everything he could to hurt me."

"Not on purpose!" Sirius says in a strangled voice. "It's over, James, please!"

"It was my fault for marrying you," Lily says, "I should have known better."

Sirius goes very still. James pushes himself up slowly.

"My mother thought I loved you and I was guilty that she died."

Sirius closes his eyes. He has hated himself for a long time now, so it isn't hard for him to face James' reaction. Lily has obviously never seen him really angry. She would lie, lie her pretty ass off to save herself if she knew what he was about to do.

James is drawing his wand. The doorbell rings.

"Why didn't you ever tell Remus that charm?" Lily says reproachfully. She gets up to answer the door, not looking at James. "Harry's going to catch cold waiting for us."

"Avada Kedavra," he says. He isn't even sure that it will work, as he wasn't sure up to that moment whether he wanted it to end this way, but it does. He turns to Sirius, who is facing him wide-eyed.

"Christ, James, have you gone mad?"

James shakes his head. "I want you to know that I blame you fully and hope that you rot in Azkaban." He says, "I hereby bequeath you all my possessions. My wand's included in that, by the way, and I've destroyed yours. It's a good thing Remus never trusted you."

When Remus comes in Sirius is standing over Lily and James' bodies. Later he wonders if he imagined the look on Sirius' face. As the Ministry takes Sirius away laughing he decides that he must have. A Sirius in pain isn't something he quite recognizes; Sirius laughing makes much more sense.

Over the years, Remus watches Harry grow up with James' looks and Sirius' temperament, so that he begins to question what happened.

"They were a lovely couple," an aquaintance was quoted as saying, "though unfortunate in their choice of friends. They made many great contributions to society during the years given to them."

"They loved each other very much," Remus told the same newspaper, glad that his doubt wouldn't be conveyed in print. The editor didn't see fit to include his last word, "I never would have believed Sirius to be capable of such a thing."

-fin-


End file.
